Idiosyncrasies
by HarlequinRaven
Summary: She likes to stand still in the middle of the street. He likes to collect medicine, just in case. They both have their peculiarities. AH, Alice/Jasper. For the ‘Epic T-Rated Oneshot Contest’.


Idiosyncrasies

_Summary:_ She likes to stand still in the middle of the street. He likes to collect medicine. They both have their peculiarities. Alice/Jasper. Human. For the 'Epic T-Rated Oneshot Contest'.

Rules of the contest, which is being run by Daddy's Little Cannibal and Bronzehairedgirl620:

1. No lemons.  
2. It must be rated T.  
3. It has to have a line (not an actual character) about a cannibal.  
4. It has to have a line (not an actual character) about a fireman.  
1. No lemons.  
5. Canon pairings.  
6. It has to be a one-shot, you're allowed to continue it when the contest is over with.  
7. Must copy and paste this to the beginning of every story you enter (you're allowed up to two entries, collaborations are accepted).  
1. No lemons.

Well, here is my entry. I must admit, I enjoy writing slightly screwed-up Alice/Jasper. :)

* * *

Alice sighed heavily. _I'm_ _late. So late. _

_Jasper is going to kill me._

Well, maybe 'kill' was a bit drastic. He'd gotten over that stage of his life a while back.

People questioned why the hell Alice and Jasper were together. They all thought Alice was insane for wanting to willingly be with 'someone like Jasper', to quote them directly. Perhaps they were right and she _was_ insane. Alice didn't know, nor, frankly, did she care. She just shot them all an eerie smile, and ignored them. Like she always had done.

No one truly understood their relationship. Many had tried, but the same number had failed. To the average outside observer, they seemed like complete opposites. Short and tall. Dark and blonde. Soprano and bass.

But they had one, crucial thing in common. They were both completely and utterly screwed up in one way or another.

On the way back to their dilapidated apartment, Alice swung by the pharmacy to pick up Jasper's prescription. He wasn't sick or anything. He just liked to keep the medicine nearby. In case he ever _was_ sick. Just one of his little eccentricities. Like their 'dilapidated' house. Jasper's father was a doctor. Jasper himself was a fireman, and Alice wrote books. They weren't exactly short of cash. But they preferred the dark. The torn. The crippled.

They preferred a house that was just like them.

Jasper had never been to a hospital. Alice had never asked him to go to one, either. They would only try to diagnose him, to label him… to take everything that was Jasper and try and cram him into a name. Find a name for the complexity of Jasper? Alice scoffed. There wasn't one. She smiled fondly. He was just Jasper.

A paradox. Unexplainable. Like she was. She often did things people would consider completely weird. Like, one day she had woken up and decided she wanted to speak French. But the only phrase she knew was '_Je t'aime'. _So she stayed with Jasper all day. Repeating her one French phrase.

Alice remembered how she had met him. She liked to drift off, back in time to that memory often. Alice stood stock-still in the middle of the street, a crumpled paper bag of pills clutched to her chest, and just let herself daydream. Remembering. People gave her uneasy looks as they passed by her, but she didn't notice. She barely registered the people who stared at her anymore.

_His blond hair fell in a perfect wave over his face. He tossed it back, peering into her eyes, his blue ones filled with worry._

"_Miss?" he questioned, wiping a sheen of sweat from his grimy brow. Alice could do nothing but stare. Her gaze was focused behind him, to the large, charred ruin that had once been her family home. Figures in yellow and red were killing the last of the flames with huge hoses that made a churning noise that rang horribly in Alice's ears._

"_Miss?" the blond man repeated, stressing the word. "Are you injured?"_

"_Not now, I'm thinking," Alice said airily as she surveyed her broken home. Her broken family. They were dead. She knew it… she just didn't know how she knew it._

_The blond … fireman, Alice could see that clearly now, by his attire, looked at her with something akin to companionship in his eyes. As if he had just recognised a kindred spirit._

_He didn't take her to the hospital. He took her home. _

_Where she had stayed with him ever since._

She had never questioned staying with him. She just knew she _should_. She didn't feel safe with him… but she didn't feel safe _without_ him. What she did feel was loved. Alice didn't need anyone else to understand, because _she_ understood. So did Jasper. They needed each other, like a drug addict needed heroin. Like a cannibal needed human flesh, and probably a shrink. Like a pod needed a pea. There were countless similes.

Alice suddenly realised she was just idly standing in the middle of the street… again. She stood for a few seconds longer, before it occurred to her that she was now even more late than she had been previously. _Damn it. _Alice began to run in the direction of home.

She approached the door. It was unlocked, as always. It didn't even _have_ a lock. There was a large, gaping hole where a handle and lock should be. Instead, Alice just applied a little pressure to the door with her hands and it swung open with practised ease.

"Jazz?" Alice called, setting the paper bag on the chipped, burned table by the side of the door.

"In here," Jasper replied, quietly, but in the silence of the house, Alice heard him easily. She smiled at the sound of his voice, going through to the 'lounge'.

Jasper was lying on the worn, grimy couch, hands behind his head, staring up through a hole in the ceiling. Alice moved towards him, turning her head, also peering up through the hole. She couldn't remember whether it had been Jasper or herself who had caused that one.

"What is it?" Alice asked, sitting on the side of the couch, next to Jasper's torso, which she lazily drew circles on as they both looked upwards, out on the grey sky.

"I made another scar today," Jasper said, with detachment.

"So did I," Alice replied, with equal laziness in her tone, both still looking upwards. Alice sighed, looking down, until she looked towards Jasper.

Her eyes met his, and he pulled her on top of him for a languishing kiss. "What do you want to do later?" Alice whispered against his lips.

"Watch the flowers grow," Jasper said, with sudden, child-like excitement colouring his tone. Alice hated to disappoint him, but she had to point out two things. "Jasper, we don't have flowers. And they don't grow during the night, anyway."

Jasper's eyes twinkled. "_My_ flowers do. They're outside."

Alice looked through the empty window frame. The actual window had been shattered to pieces a while back. The garden was bare. It had been burned to ashes, and now nothing would grow there. It was practically dead, a shell of a flourishing garden, with nothing to indicate that anything had _ever_ grown there. But after looking at it for a little while, Alice met Jasper's eyes, hers matching the anticipation in his.

"Okay," she said happily, holding out her hand. Jasper took it, seeming to realise then what time it was. "You kept me waiting," he said, a slight pout on his lips. "You _never_ keep me waiting."

"Sorry," Alice said, covering his lips with hers. She clutched his hand tightly. "Flowers?" she tempted, smirking.

Jasper narrowed his eyes, but they were playful. "Subject changer."

"Guilty as charged," Alice said. Jasper led her out into the front garden. The sun had set, and now the sky was a smoky greyish-black, solemn. The way they liked it to be. With a sharp creak, Jasper threw a few small wood beams aside, as he pulled out two, rusty, half-broken chairs from the rubble that lay tossed around the front of the house.

He dragged them out of the piles of rubble and with only a little difficulty, as they were quite rusty from disuse, set them out. Gracefully, Alice took a seat in hers. Jasper too sat down, once again taking her small hand in his larger one.

Together, they sat out front all night, watching the flowers grow.

No one else could see them, the brilliant, withered buds that grew under the moon's sinister touch and had both of them transfixed.

But _they_ could.

That was what mattered.

* * *

A/N: Wow, I really enjoyed writing that, actually. Haha. Anyway, please review. I'd like to know what you think. :)

Raven. x


End file.
